I lowered my head. My voice trembled with nerves, yet I forced it to remain clear. "Your Majesty, Yuzhi has one matter… and dares to beg."
The candlelight in the hall burned quietly, illuminating the dark dragon embroidery on her black everyday robes. She did not immediately tell me to rise, nor did she ask anything. She simply looked at me in silence. The gentleness from moments ago slowly faded from her gaze, replaced by the calm inscrutability of an emperor.
"Speak."
A single word, devoid of emotion.
I took a deep breath and briefly recounted the matter of the Zhao family, omitting the hearsay details, emphasizing only Elder Zhao's advanced age and distinguished service, the Zhao family's long-standing reputation for integrity, and… the innocence of their family members.
"Your Majesty's wisdom illuminates all. If Zhao Shilang truly bears guilt, he should naturally be punished according to the law. Yuzhi does not dare ask for mercy beyond the law. It is only that… the Zhao family's male relatives, especially the principal spouse and the young children, have no connection to this case and possess no means of self-protection. I humbly beg Your Majesty… in consideration of Elder Zhao's service across two reigns and the Zhao family's generations of loyalty, could you… show some compassion and grant leniency, sparing them the suffering of exile? Even if… even if they are merely allowed to return to their natal families, or enter a convent to cultivate—just leave them a single path to survival?"
I spoke slowly and carefully, weighing every word, lowering myself as far as possible, seeking only the slightest chance.
When I finished, the hall fell into complete silence. Only the faint crackle of a candle wick breaking the stillness.
I knelt on the icy floor, keenly aware of the gaze resting upon the crown of my head—almost tangible—as it grew heavier and heavier, and… colder.
After a long while, she finally spoke. Her voice was not loud, yet it carried a detachment and authority I had never heard before—belonging to an emperor, stripped entirely of personal feeling.
"Yuzhi, do you know that the tax silver Zhao Wenbin was involved with came from the disaster relief and reconstruction funds allocated by the court after last year's floods in three prefectures of Jiangnan? Embezzling such funds—do you know how many disaster victims were left homeless, how many starved to death? His crime is beyond description!"
My heart sank abruptly.
"As for the Zhao family's male relatives," her voice turned even colder, "according to the Phoenix Code, when an official commits a grave crime of embezzlement, the family property is confiscated and the dependents are seized by the state. This is ancestral law and national statute. How could it be altered for personal reasons? If today I grant leniency to the Zhao family, tomorrow the relatives of other criminals will follow suit and plead their cases. Where would the authority of the law be? Where would the discipline of the court stand?"
She rose and walked over to me, looking down from above. The candlelight behind her cast deep shadows across her face. I could not see her eyes clearly, only feel the suffocating pressure that rushed toward me.
"You have lived long within the deep palace, recuperating and reading. How much do you truly know of governance and the people's livelihood? How much do you understand of law and state doctrine?" Her tone held no reproach, no anger—only an almost cruel calm. "Do you know how many memorials pile up on my desk every day accusing officials of wrongdoing? How many report disasters in the provinces? How many are urgent dispatches from the border, military situations burning like fire?"
She paused briefly. A trace of weariness seeped into her voice, yet it remained unyielding. "I must balance the court, appease the people, deter the borders. The decisions I must make—can make, must make—are far more complex, far more difficult, and far more… cruel than you imagine. Not every compassion can be extended. Not every 'innocent' can be preserved. Some sacrifices are necessary costs."
"Matters of state," she concluded, each word like an ice bead smashing into my heart, "you do not understand. And in the future, you need not understand."
She no longer looked at me. Turning back to the desk, she picked up that memorial again, as if the small plea and refusal just now had never occurred.
I was left kneeling on the freezing floor, every drop of blood in my body seemingly frozen solid.
You do not understand. And in the future, you need not understand.
Two short sentences, like red-hot iron clamps, brutally tore apart the illusion she had carefully maintained these past days with tenderness and indulgence. At last, with painful clarity, I realized—
The one before me was no longer Xiao Yuhuang who had sworn vows beneath the plum trees, no longer even the woman who had watched me dance on a rainy night, eyes burning with obsession and possession.
She was the Phoenix Emperor.
An emperor who had ascended the throne over the corpses of her mother and sisters, who held the power of life and death, who ruled the world through cold calculation.
Her kindness to me was real. Her protection of me within this gilded cage, shielding me from wind and rain, was also real. But this "kindness" and "protection" came with conditions—I had to be obedient, had to remain within the boundaries she drew, had to be the "pure," "quiet," "unaware" Su Yuzhi she desired.
The moment I tried to cross that line, to touch her imperial authority and rules with personal feeling or moral judgment, the gentle façade would be torn away in an instant, revealing beneath it the cold, unyielding, iron heart of imperial power.
A crack had thus appeared without warning—on this silent night in the deep palace, between us.
It was not a fierce argument, not an angry accusation, not even a raised voice.
Yet it was more lethal than any violent clash, because it sprang from a fundamental, irreconcilable difference in position and perception. She was the one holding the pieces, and I—along with the Zhao family's "innocent" relatives—were merely pieces on the board, to be weighed and, if necessary, sacrificed.
Slowly, I stood up from the freezing floor. A piercing numbness shot through my knees. I did not look at her again, nor did I say another word. I merely walked back to the couch by the window and picked up the water conservancy book I had been reading.
The characters on the page blurred into an indistinct haze beneath the flickering candlelight.
When she left that night, I do not know.